Title: Brighter or Darker?

Problem Scenario

When I make a habitat out of a cardboard box and put different pieces of brighter and darker construction paper what side will crickets be attracted to?

Broad Question

Will crickets be attracted to brighter or darker colors in their habitat?

Specific Question

When I put brighter and darker colors into the crickets habitat what will they choose?

Hypothesis

I think that crickets will be attracted to the darker side of the choice chamber, where the crickets usually come out at night.

Graph of Hypothesis

Variables

Independent Variable: Habitat colors

Dependent Variable: Cricket habitat

Variables That Need To Be Controlled: Habitat (card board box)

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation

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General Plan

In this experiment I am going to make a choice chamber with brighter and darker colors, then put a number of crickets in the chamber and see what color there are more crickets in. Then i will see results of which color they we attracted to.

Potential Problems And Solutions

Safety Or Environmental Concerns

Experimental Design

(add the correct headings from the experimental design page before beginning)

What is your experimental unit?

This is the base unit of your experiment, for example, one plant, one ice cube, one dish. It is the thing you will be measuring.

Approximetly 25 crickets

Number Of Trials:

This is how many times you will repeat the experiment.

10 trials of recording each amount of crickets on each side.

Number Of Subjects In Each trial:

This is the number of different treatments you will use. For example, if you are comparing rust formation using salt and no salt, there would be 2 subjects in each trial. If you were comparing rust formation with no salt and three different amounts of salt, then you would have 4 subjects in each trial.

2 subjects, Lighter habitat and Darker habitat

Number of Observations:

How many measurements will you take for each experimental unit times the number or trials

2 measurements for each trial. The crickets on one side vs. the other.

When data will be collected

Looking for an actual date or dates here. This is requiring you to commit to your project.

2/7/13 or every 5 to 10 minutes in a 40ish minute class.

Where will data be collected?:

Be specific

In the science classroom

Resources and Budget Table

Item	Number needed	Where I will get this	Cost
Crickets	25	pet store	5
Card board box	1	school	free
poster board	1	staples	5
construction paper pack	1	school	free

Detailed Procedure

Step one:

take a cardboard box and line the sides and floors with colored paper, in my case I put light blue, light pink and light green on one side then black, dark brown and dark green on the other.
Step two:
Buy about 24 giant crickets and place them in the center of you color choice chamber.
Step three:
After all crickets are placed into the choice chamber let the crickets get comfortable to the new habitat. This takes about 5 minutes.
Step four:
After the 5 minutes take your first observation and write down how many crickets are on the lighter side, then how many crickets are on the darker side.
Step five:
Let the crickets move around even more and collect data of what side the crickets are on about every 5 minutes.

diagram

Photo List

Crickets
Habitat
Crickets in habitat
what side that has the most crickets

Time Line

Procedure, Timeline, and Photo list complete 2/1
Begin Experiments 2/4
Experiments complete 3/1
Analysis 3/7
Discussion/Background 3/15
Wiki complete 3/15
Posters complete 3/22
KMS Science Fair 3/29

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Data Table

Day One	Day One
Lighter	Darker
3	21
1	23
0	24
5	19
7	17
12	12
Day Two	Day Two
Lighter	Darker
5	19
8	16
3	21
5	19

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Data Analysis

All Raw Data

Day One
Light side: 3 Crickets
Dark side: 21 Crickets

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Light side: 1 Cricket
Dark side: 23 Crickets

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Light side: 0 Crickets
Dark side: 24 Crickets

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Light side: 5 Crickets
Dark side 19 Crickets

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Light side: 7 Crickets
Dark side: 17 Crickets

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Light side: 12 Crickets
Dark side: 12 Crickets

Day Two
Light side: 5 Crickets
Dark side: 19 Crickets

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Light side: 8 Crickets
Dark side: 16 Crickets

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Light side: 3 Crickets
Dark side: 21 Crickets

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Light side: 5 Crickets
Dark side: 19 Crickets

Graphs

Photos

Results

During this experiment I made a choice chamber with a lighter colored side and a darker colored side to see which habitat color crickets would choose. Every 5 minutes I recorded how many crickets were on the lighter side and darker side of the choice chamber. Throughout the experiment the crickets were more attracted to the darker side than the lighter side. The average number of crickets on the lighter side was much lower then the average of crickets on the darker side.

Conclusion

I hypothesized that crickets will be attracted to the darker side of the choice chamber, where the crickets usually come out at night. I accept my hypothesis. Every 5 minutes that I had recorded what side the crickets where on, more crickets were on the darker side. Only one time did the lighter side have the same number of crickets as the darker side. There was 12 on the darker side and 12 on the lighter side. I would not change my hypothesis. My hypothesis clearly states that "the crickets will be attracted to the darker side" which the crickets were average wise, attracted to the darker side over the lighter side.

Discussion

Benefit to Community and/or Science

Background Research

References

Abstract

Over the course of this experiment I wanted to find out what color habitat crickets liked. Darker colored habitats or lighter colored habitats. I had hypothesized that the crickets would mostly be in the darker habitat of the choice chamber I made. The choice chamber consisted of bright colored paper on one side and darker colored paper on the other. When I recorded the number of crickets on each side after 5 minutes the average of crickets on the darker side was overall greater than the average of crickets on the lighter side.